Name
The Value Of Pets
Topic
Ethnical Responsibility for Living Creatures
Learning time
1 hour and 40 minutes
Designed time
7 hours
Size of class
20
Description
A school cooperates with an animal shelter. The students investigates in people's attitude towards pets, research gerneral information via interviews. Afterwards they visit an animal shelter and find out why animals are there. They try to find means to support the animal shelter and how this institution can contribute to society (dog walking circles, visiting elderly people - retirement homes).
Aims
- increase awareness for social responsibility for animals and the community - finding was of supporting charity organisations (donations, charity events...) - practical implementation of interviews and questionnaires - social skills - group work - working with data and statistics - working with tools for video production - presentation skills
Outcomes
Application
Editor
Anja
Edit
Introduction
170 minutes)
  • Discuss
    10
    20
    0
    The teacher informs the class about the project. A general discussion about the importance of pets in families is started. Then groups of 5 people each are formed. Each groups gets a different task, which they have to work on over a weeks' time, to be able to present their findings afterwards.
  • Investigate
    40
    5
    0
    Group 1: Data collection This groups designs a questionnaire about pets: Who has pets? Which ones? Why? How many? How much money do they spend on them? How do they spend their free time? ... Students should find their own ideas and questions, so this is just a collection of ideas. The questionnaire should be distributed to other students at school (around 100, if possible) and collected afterwards. Then students analyse the data and create some statistics on the matter, which will finally be presented in the follow-up lesson.
  • Produce
    40
    5
    0
    Group 2: A visit at the animal shelter Group 2 does some research on animal shelters in their region. Then they get in contact with one of them and organise a visit. This should happen during the project week. Students prepare a few questions for the employees of the shelter and during their visit, they interview the staff. They should also bring a camera (or mobile phone) to film the shelter and, if possible, the interview(s). Postproduction of the video is the final step, so that they can then present the outcome.
  • Practice
    40
    5
    0
    Group 3: Supporting the animal shelter This group finds out about ways to raise money and awareness for charity organisations. Then they try to find a way of supporting the animal shelter for real. As time is limited, the teacher could suggest collecting money via selling cakes and snacks at school, for example. They could also organise a give-away sale at school, or charity collection in town. It needs to be something small, but should students that even small things can help. In the presentation they will then inform their colleagues about their experiences.
  • Investigate
    40
    5
    0
    Group 4: Pets and social contacts Group 4 tries to find ideas on how animal shelters can cooperate with other social institution and the community in general. Possible ways of doing so could be dog walking circles, visits at retirement homes, teenagers "adopting" pets, which they care for regularly. This group mainly has to work on new ideas that could bring advantages for the whole community and that connect people from different social circumstances with the help of pets. In their presentation, they should critically evaluate these ideas and the whole class could finally decide to give one of the ideas a try.
Notes:
Resources linked: 0
Working Phase
200 minutes)
  • Practice
    200
    5
    0
    All the groups work on their tasks individually after school. They have to train a variety of skills, such as organising meetings, distributing tasks, working in groups, getting into contact with the outside world, preparing material (questionaires, videos...) ... This enables them to use each student's strengths, rather than their weaknesses and takes them out of their comfort zone. The teacher is not always present during this stage, which is in fact an advantage as it increases self-responsibility.
Notes:
Resources linked: 0
Presentation
50 minutes)
  • Discuss
    50
    20
    0
    In the final stage of the project, students present their group work, as described in the introduction phase. Each group gets about 5-7 minutes to present and a short phase of evaluation afterwards. A final discussion can be done at the end - especially discussing further ideas for cooperations and/or financial support (see group 3 and 4). If considered useful and practical follow-up lessons or another project are possible.
Notes:
Resources linked: 0

Learning Experience

One or more graphs might not display correctly, because one or more learning types do not have duration set.
Social learning graph will not display correctly, because no class size is set.
Social learning graph will not display correctly, because one or more learning types do not have group size set.